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Few people have as much right to claim they are world musicians as Ferenc Snétberger has. The guitar virtuoso has grown up with music. Born in 1957 in Northern Hungary, the youngest son of a musical family learned by listening to and playing with his father. "He was the best guitar player in the whole area. My father had a sound of his own and a very personal style." Since his early childhood Ferenc only longed for becoming a great guitarist. Yet his father did not really promote the son's enthusiasm for music. Only when he was 13 years old, Ferenc was allowed to attend the music school. There he studied classical guitar and discovered his love for Johann Sebastian Bach. This fascination has been enduring until today.
After many years of professional work and a bunch of records under his own name, his personal style has developed into an amalgam that defies all common musical categories. A guitar magazine put it this way: "What he plays is jazz, is classical, is Brazil. Snétberger's great art is the dialogue between today and yesterday, the synthesis." His playing includes native gypsy music and Spanish flamenco, classical guitar and jazzy episodes. Snétberger wants to take the listeners on a journey through all these different musical worlds and discharge them with the feeling of an unusual and very special experience. His means to this end is improvisation.
When he enters the stage he usually has a sheet of paper with him that shows one or two bars of music, some chord symbols and maybe a third bar behind. Nothing that anybody else could understand. Nothing that an untrained mind could consider a serious sketch. Yet for Snétberger these notes mean the structure of his music. He knows exactly which keys he will take his melody to and has defined all the turning points. Everything he plays is improvised but everything is aiming at a goal. His new album, "Balance", recorded at the Philharmonie Berlin, documents one of these "very different situations" when even an extraordinary musician like Snétberger surprises himself. Improvising gives the artist the freedom to pick up the mood of the moment and let it flow into his playing. For this kind of interaction Snétberger loves his audiences.
Also available: Signature (ENJ-9017 2) / The Budapest Concert (TIP-888 823 2) / Obsession (TIP-888 834 2) / For My People (ENJ-9387 2)
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Some other recordings by
Ferenc Snetberger:
(Full list)
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